Financialization and local statecraft: Truth and consequences

Dire warnings abound of English local government insolvency through reckless decision-making. Andy Pike’s Financialization and Local Statecraft offers readers a more nuanced account of varied local statecrafters navigating fiscal-finance dilemmas, acknowledging both agency and constraints. Pike especially takes issue with the popular account of local officials as ‘councillors at the casino’. Responding to the call for historicization, this review essay puts Pike’s findings on contemporary financialized local statecraft into conversation with two relevant antecedent tales of neoliberalism and its implications: Susan Strange’s Casino Capitalism and David Osborne and Ted Gaebler’s Reinventing Government . The legacy of received ideas and imparted wisdom are assessed: perceived truths shape long-run consequences.